geek

All posts tagged geek

In my previousposts on the subject, I’ve introduced my “textures” project and talked about some of what it means to me. In this latest installment (below) I admit to being strongly influenced by the prints of Ansel Adams. I know that claiming Ansel as an influence is incredibly cliché. He has influenced hundreds of thousands (millions?) of landscape photographers. In my case it is not his landscapes that have influenced me. Rather, it is his prints of landscapes. Not what they are of, but the dynamic range of the prints themselves. Bare with me as I try to explain.

Without getting too technical, I can sum up the problem. Your computer is terrible at displaying images. If you could view an Ansel Adams physical print in person, compared to a computerized version of that same print, you would instantly see what I am talking about. The whites are “whiter” and the blacks “blacker” in the physical print. This is because the “dynamic range” (or values between whitest white and blackest black) are not the same on the computer as they are in a high-quality print. The maximum black and white points are scrunched closer together. Without even realizing it our brains can pick up on difference. The extra dynamic range in the physical print produces a more pleasing affect on our eyes. The effect, which Ansel Adams was a master of, is like looking out a window. The computer can’t come close to matching it.

When a high-quality print with a big dynamic range is scanned in to a computer with a smaller dynamic range, information has to be thrown away. Most of the tossed information is in the “middle” range of the image (in the grays). Digital SLRs have this problem too, which is why many photographers continue to shoot with film. This tossing of information is called “Dynamic Range Compression (DRC). Don’t be confused by HDR (high dynamic range) photography. HDR photography is actually an extreme example of DRC. Have you ever seen HDR photography that looks really strange? The reason why it looks so strange is because tons of information has to get tossed for that picture to be displayable on your computer screen. The end result is something that can look very fake.

I think a visual example will help anyone understand the issue. Let’s pretend this first image shows the total range in an Ansel Adams print. Notice the very smooth transition of gray values from black to white. The black is also very black, and the white very white.

If we were to move that to a computer, the computer has to figure out how to scrunch all that information in to something it can display. Which “grays” in the top image get “mapped” to the lower image is called a “tone map.” The computer software picks an average gray value for a certain region of incoming dynamic range, and then changes all the values in that range to the average value. For the technologically challenged, this means the computer has to toss some of the values that were in the first image to get to the second image. We might end up getting something like this:

I have exaggerated this effect for illustrative purposes. However, I hope it helps in understanding why this is a problem for photographers in the digital age. The good news is that several computer companies are working on computer displays that match, or in some cases exceed, the total dynamic range of an Ansel Adam’s print. The bad news is that it will be many years before the average person can afford one of these new computer screens.

What I have done with this latest round of textures is to push the range of the average computer display to its absolute maximum. If your computer monitor is of decent quality, and you have it adjusted properly, you will see what I have tried to achieve. If you, like most people, have never properly adjusted your monitor… these images may look a little odd to you. Either they will be too bright or too dark. The balance is tenuous.

Click an image to bring up full-size viewer. Use arrow keys to navigate.

In an amazing feat of space Engineering, the Mars Science Labratory “Curiosity” successfully landed after spending more than eight months in space. The car-sized rover took over 7 years to build, and cost about $2 billion. Making this image, and similar ones the rover has beamed back from the Red Planet, some of the most expensive photos in history.

Some people may ask the question if spending such a large sum of money on a project like this is really worth it. Especially when we are all experiencing economic difficulty. That is a completely valid question to ask. What price should we put on exploration, discovery, and understanding? There certainly has to be limits. However, what you are seeing in the below image isn’t just a crooked landscape of an alien world. What you are seeing is the culmination of humanity pushing itself to the limits of our understanding. Every time we do this we grow. We become stronger. There is something new we learn about ourselves and the universe in which we live. What is the price tag of human curiosity? How much would you be willing to sell it for?

Integrating WordPress and Facebook is a must-have feature for any modern blog. While attempting to tie this site to Facebook I discovered a few ‘gotchas’ when using third-party media hosting sites. When inserting images in to posts via URLs a number of critical features are lost in the process. I store all my images on a third-party media hosting site called SmugMug. SmugMug is invaluable because it integrates seamlessly with Lightroom, and gives me one central location from which to control the global use of my images. WordPress is very good at supporting images that are uploaded to the hosting server via the media upload process, but has generally poor support for URL based images when using third-party sites. Worse for the wear, several advanced plugins and post features don’t work with URL included images at all. The big issue for Facebook and WordPress integrations is the lack of support for URL based OG:Image tags.

OG:Image Tags

Facebook’s Open Graph feature is what allows websites to publish specific objects to Facebook when users of their service do things like share links, like items, etc. Web developers can write custom code that assists Facebook OG in selecting things like title, summary, and image. Doing this right ensures that your site is best represented to other Facebook users. Not doing anything could mean your site does not put its best foot forward to the Facebook horde. Such is the case with WordPress and URL based images in posts. Facebook OG is unable to find the URL images in a post, and thus ends up selecting things like logos or other non-related images to display on Facebook time-lines, etc.

WordPress Custom Fields To The Rescue

One possible solution to the WordPress URL based og:image limitation is using the custom fields feature in WordPress to handle this meta data. Before diving in to the how-to, I should mention that an invaluable tool for determining how Facebook OG will process your pages (and render links to FB users) is the debugger tool available here: http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug

One important note: Make sure that the WordPress Facebook plugin is the only module generating OG tags. If not, the Facebook debugger will complain using terminology like this:'article' is invalid because it specifies multiple 'og:url' values

That is a dead give-away that you’ve got more than one plugin producing OG values. In my case, I have both the SEO and Facebook plugins installed. Going to SEO->Social and unchecking “Add OpenGraph meta data” solved the multiple values issue.

Custom fields are a base feature in WordPress that allow you to specify any custom meta data on any article. The feature is quite flexible and can be used with minimal pain. When you are writing a post or page, you’ll see two little boxes in the upper right: “screen options” and “help.” Click screen options and ensure “custom fields” is checked. This will display the Custom Fields section on the edit page. In that box, find “Add New Custom Field” and select “enter new”. You can name the new field whatever you want. I am using “og:image” in my example, but you might want to call it something like “Facebook_OG_Image”. In the text field for each post, add the URL to the image you want displayed at Facebook when someone links your page or post. Note that you only need to add the field once. On other posts it will show up in the custom fields dropbox, making the process quite easy.

Update The Template

WordPress custom fields don’t do anything on their own. You’re going to need to add some code to your template to get the og:image meta tag to show up correctly. The tag needs to be inside the page <head> tags. The file that includes these tags is usually found in wp-content/themes/<your theme>/header.php. If your theme doesn’t have the head tags there, you may need to hunt around to locate the right file. Inside of header.php, locate the <head> section and add the following code:

Keep in mind that my example is quite simple. You may want to add a more complex bit of code that selects a default og:image if you have not specified one, for example. Now when you create a page or article with a custom “og:image” field it will show up in Facebook OG as expected. Enjoy.

A service system lift allows technicians to access the target chamber interior for inspection and maintenance.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is located at Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California. The complex houses the most powerful laser system in the world, using 192 lasers to create a peak power of 500,000,000,000,000 watts of energy for 1/20,000,000,000 of a second. All of that energy focuses precisely on a 2mm wide gas filled object in the center of a 50 foot wide metal sphere, with various detectors placed around it.

One of the main goals of NIF is to simulate certain effects of an atomic bomb without blowing one up. Really powerful bombs like the ones the US have are kind of hard to predict. It can be quite challenging to anticipate the yield a complex thermonuclear device will have. There is no nice way to say it, but we need to know how effective our nuclear weapons are so that when (not if) we use them, we know how many we need to drop on a target to effectively destroy it. We can also learn how many we can get rid of and still ensure mutual destruction of any attacker. Basically, the yield numbers are there to help us guess how many people we can kill at once.

A side benefit of our nation having a inertial confinement fusion research device (the fancy term for NIF) is that we can start to experiment with controlled fusion reactions in a laboratory setting. The hope is to some day create a self-sustaining fusion reaction. Like a mini Sun. Of course – chances are it will be decades before they have this particular part worked out. The benefit of getting it working would be an almost limitless supply of energy. I don’t know what the energy needs of the United States will be in 75 years, but I am fairly certain that without technology such as this our grandchildren will be in big trouble.

For the IT nerds in the room: 3par storage, HP blades, and a smattering of other minor gear.

Images Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The US government retains copyright on all images. Used with permission.

My desire is to create a YAB (Yet Another Blog) that others might find interesting. That said, I am not so egotistical as to be unaware that the vast majority of visitors won’t care. Thus, by reality, this blog will mostly reflect what I am interested in. As any blog should.

Photography. If you are like me, you see emotions. Color, form, composition. All create an emotional reaction. Personally, I rather think I’m mediocre in my ability speak visually. Think about how well you speak English. Each person is variable in their skill. Yet, just because you are not the best orator on the planet you still speak. The challenge, you may find, isn’t really the speaking. It is listening. Listening is a skill that requires attention and practice. It is easy to hear, but to listen takes skill. Many people don’t see, either. They only look. As with any language, seeing takes training and practice. It also requires your attention and skill.

Politics. Discussing it isn’t polite. Not discussing it is dangerous. Politics is usually a topic to be avoided in mixed company. Our government of the people necessarily requires its people to form political opinions, question leaders, and threaten to overturn real tyranny when it appears. History is a harsh teacher. There is a good chance that some day our society will fail. Until then, all we can do is try to repair the sins of our fathers.

Geek. What can I say? Linux. Physics. Electronics. Not so much in to sports. I’d rather discuss the Large Hadron Collider or the iPad. I ask my children about the Arabic Number System or the Periodic Table of Elements more than I ask them about their favorite super hero.